


Let Slip

by halotolerant



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Nightmares, Partners to Lovers, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 18:42:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5795656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt 'nightmares'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Slip

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Draycevixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draycevixen/gifts).



> I asked for some prompts recently and Drayce offered this fandom with 'PTSD or just a simple nightmare' - thank you m'dear! *g*

The sex happened without commentary, and then they would fall back and sleep, and when Ray woke up in the mornings he never found Bodie still in bed next to him.

 

The first time they had been – not drunk, but somewhere short of breaking through the surface of sober, a chemical concussion to wipe out the last thirty-six hours, and the dead faces and the people who’d been crying and the fact that catching certain clues earlier might have stopped at least half of it.

 

Ray couldn’t pinpoint, then or later on further reflection, when it was that they’d started spending time together off the clock. Certainly on his part it wasn’t a conscious decision. But somehow they’d got to a place where the only conceivable activity after a day like that had been to make a silent, irritable way to Ray’s flat together, via the chippie, roiling out into the cold again in vinegarish steam, and to crack open wine and pour full glasses and wander semi-aimlessly round the living room, not doing anything that could be pinned down as mutually comforting.

 

And then, come to rest side-by-side on Ray’s sofa, they’d been kissing – Ray would can’t recall who reached in first, who tipped them over the edge.

 

They had been kissing, and then it had become apparent that neither of them cared to throw another punch, at least for that day – Bodie’s knuckles were so bruised, that evening, that Ray can remember, the purple stain on them, swollen, and that in touching he’d often winced – and then had been the sex, the first time, messy and desperate and tinged with hopelessness.

 

In essence, nothing Ray hadn’t done before after a bad day’s work, but never with Bodie.

 

They didn’t discuss it, and in perhaps the same way that they didn’t discuss the take-away buying or the wine or the way they kept going to Ray’s flat together, and never to Bodie’s anymore. Six months since then and they had never asked the question of each other, never made a plan, never said anything in the daylight that they mightn’t have anyway, before.

 

If there was a before. Sometimes Ray thinks it was always this, between them, except that for a while they hadn’t quite got round to it.

 

Ray had once stood at the launderette and wondered about keeping a spare napkin for Bodie, separate from the rest of the guest pile, perhaps with its own ring. He was eating at Ray’s a couple of times a week, now, after all.

 

Half an hour of staring at the spinning washing, and thinking it over, and feeling mummified in silence.

 

Then the time came for Ray to move house. They had still never been together at Bodie’s – Bodie barely even spent any time there that Ray could calculate – and never anywhere else, never on assignment. He wondered, as they headed together to his new place for the first time, what the change might bring.

 

If they could change one thing, one implacable certainty of this, could they change others?

 

Bodie was subdued during the drive, as he’d been more and more of late. He made a quick survey of Ray’s new flat, shooting out a few sharp jokes – “Didn’t manage to lose that china lamb in the move, eh? What a shame” – and taking in the way Ray had arranged the bedroom – with the comic anthology Bodie had been reading at the old flat placed once more on the right-hand bedside table - without comment.

 

Dinner was a takeaway curry. They ate sitting opposite each other; the new kitchen table was smaller than at the old place, and their knees kept brushing, awkward. Ray kept finding himself shooting glances at the clock and wondering when it would be late enough to just go to bed. Thanks to his move they’d been apart for longer than usual, not spent the night in nearly two weeks, and now he wanted to touch Bodie’s skin, wanted the smell of him, wanted to be inside him, fairly ached for it.

 

“I told you, stewed apple,” Ray said, putting down the bowls. “I’m not buying those frozen pudding things any more, they’re full of all sorts.”

 

It was dangerously close to an admission that he regularly shopped with both of them in mind, and perhaps it was consciousness of this, as much as the unacceptability of apples as a dessert, which made Bodie scowl.

 

“I dunno what match it is, tonight, on telly, but there’s a documentary too that…” Ray was saying, standing at the sink and drying his hands on the damp tea towel, ready to go through to the sofa and television.

 

He was cut off by Bodie getting up from his chair, striding over the tiles towards him, crowding him up against the kitchen cabinets and pushing their mouths together.

 

Ray couldn’t help the way his body melted into it. He put his arms round Bodie’s neck and deepened the kiss, pushing his tongue into Bodie’s mouth and then drawing back, fluttering with it at Bodie’s upper lip in the way that made Bodie gasp and half-shudder, and push their bodies together again, violently.

 

Kissing and kissing – it was too good to try to break off, even though Ray was straining hard in his jeans and he could feel Bodie’s erection pressing into his thigh in answer. He let his hands stray down Bodie’s broad back, and palmed at his arse.

 

Bodie growled into the kiss, and Ray felt his own lips quirk with delight, and did it again.

 

They didn’t talk, not about this or during it, but who needed words to show what they wanted? Or find out what someone else did?

 

Bodie spent a lot of energy on the persona he projected most of the time, to most people, but it hadn’t taken Ray much of touching him to figure out what he wanted, really.

 

Almost aggressively, Ray slipped one hand down under Bodie’s trousers and boxers, and ran it right down the middle of his arse, fingers pressing into his crease, rubbing possessively at Bodie’s hole, which twitched in welcome.

 

Bodie rocked for a moment against Ray’s thigh, making a choked-off noise, and Ray found himself getting impossibly more aroused.

 

He made himself break them apart, and lead the way to the bedroom.

 

\- - -

 

When Ray woke, he wasn’t sure of the time and the surroundings were still unfamiliar enough that he wasn’t confident of the place.

 

His new flat. Night, still – no light around the edges of the curtains. In his own bed, and someone with him, moving around.

 

He must only have drowsed briefly then, if Bodie was still here, and perhaps they could go another round, or try to, even if that might be dangerously close to just embracing. It didn’t take much between them, usually, to get what they needed, but he could imagine trying to coax out more; a long, slow, luscious blow-job, the kind he’d not had a chance to give up till now.

 

Turning over to look across the bed, Ray looked for Bodie’s expression, and was surprised to see that his eyes were closed.

 

Bodie was asleep, it appeared, but not soundly. His mouth was working – grimacing. As Ray watched, he suddenly moved his arms, flailing out, half-shouting.

 

“You can’t! You can’t!” And Bodie twisted, and made an awful choking noise as he mashed his face into the pillow.

 

Bodie wouldn’t want him to be seeing this. Of that Ray was certain. He felt a hot, deep guilt slinking through him, even though this was his bed – he wasn’t exactly sneaking at a keyhole.

 

The best thing might be to carefully remove himself, go the bathroom, crash about a bit so Bodie would wake in time for plausible deniability.

 

Ray was moving to do just that, when Bodie’s arm hit out and, in self-defense as it went for his face, Ray had to catch it and keep hold.

 

Bodie tensed. Blinked.

 

Instinctively, Ray lay down again on the mattress next to him, curled in, keeping their heads at the same level.

 

“It’s Ray. I’m here,” he said softly, and placed one hand, palm down, just below Bodie’s sternum, in the apex of the vee where his ribcage gave way to soft flesh.

 

Bodie grunted, shifted a little, coughed.

 

“You had a nightmare I ‘spose,” Ray continued.

 

Bodie made a noise that sounded affirmative, and sighed.

 

“It’s OK,” Ray told him. “I was sleeping funny anyway, would have had a right wry neck in the morning. You saved me from that, eh, didn’t you?” He leant in very slightly and pressed his nose into the curve of Bodie’s neck, breathing in and out, letting his warm breath kiss the skin.

 

He’d bitten at Bodie, around there, when earlier they’d been joined and moving together, him sat back on his knees and Bodie straddling him, impaled, panting, grasping, pulling him in.

 

“They were going to shoot you,” Bodie muttered now. He sounded not quite awake.

 

“I’m fine.” Ray moved his hand a little, soothing. “I’m here. I’m fine.”

 

Bodie grunted again, and turned over onto his side, facing away from Ray. In the same sequence of movement he shuffled backwards, pressing himself up into the curve of Ray’s body, the swell of his arse into Ray’s groin, the heat of his sweating back against Ray’s chest, his not very clean hair in Ray’s eyes and mouth.

 

Ray froze. Then, slowly, he shifted just enough to breathe, and let his arm come down around Bodie’s shoulder.

 

He drifted back to sleep, warm.

 

\- - -

 

Ray was woken by the sound of his doorbell. He bolted up in bed, heart beating fast without knowing why.

 

And then he saw that he was alone.

 

He cast a glance at the bathroom door but it was open, the room clearly unoccupied.

 

With a heavy sigh, he sprinted quickly down the stairs and found the postman at his door, a few envelopes and a parcel in hand.

 

Ray had ordered some paints. He’d been thinking about trying to get the feelings in his chest onto canvas, but right now all he wanted to do with the package was shove it into a shelf, drawing down some stray books on top to bury it.

 

Envelopes in hand – mostly bills from their appearance – he wandered to the kitchen still in his pyjama trousers and went to put on the kettle. Coffee probably couldn’t make him feel worse.

 

The doorbell rang again, and he grunted with irritation, going back to it, thinking that the postal service was really coming to something if they couldn’t remember to pick up all your parcels at once.

 

He opened the door.

 

“Got some bacon from the corner,” Bodie said, holding up a plastic bag between them. “You hadn’t anything in, ‘cept that apple thing. Didn’t want to, um,” he coughed, “thought I’d wait to see the post go in, not wake you.”

 

Ray took a step back, and folded his arms, and smiled.

 

“Frying pan’s over the hob,” he said. “And good morning to you too.”

 

“Good morning,” Bodie said, under his breath. He stepped over the threshold, his eyes fixed on Ray’s face.

 

“It’s very good morning,” Ray said, half-laughing. He wanted to be kissed. He settled for stroking his hand over Bodie’s shoulder, lingering and gentle.

 

It was a start.


End file.
